Civil Rights Activist: The Sharing of "Cultural Stuff" Vital to Today's America

by Janett Blythe

Paducah, KY (02/12/2022) — Civil Rights Activist and Author William H. Turner found himself making his bed before leaving his room in a downtown Paducah hotel recently. He did so because his grandmother taught him to years ago.

"Granny taught me, 'Roll that bed back up, baby.' Make up your bed," Turner told the audience in a presentation at West Kentucky Community and Technical College on February 11. "Here I am 75 years ago, making up the bed in a hotel that I paid $150 a night to stay at, but that's Granny's training. It doesn't come out of your head."

Turner, author of Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns, said his grandmother was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1895 when the nation was coming out of slavery. He said he is reminded of his grandmother every time he listens to American singer/songwriter Bill Withers' song, "Grandma's hands."

Reciting the passages from the song, Turner said, "Grandma's hands used to hand me a piece of candy; Grandma's hands picked me up each time I fell; Grandma's hands, Boy, they really came in handy. She'd say, Girl, don' you whip that boy ."

Turner said grandmothers let you get away with things they never allow their children to get away with, but more importantly, grandparents shared history and values with you that shape you forever. "They are the greatest people in the world," Turner said. "And I'm suggesting that we've gotten too far away from our grandmamas."

A historian, Turner said the "cultural stuff" that he received from his grandparents and great grandparents have been lost to young people today.

As part of WKCTC's celebration of Black History Month, Turner shared his opinion on history, politics, and America's current state for African Americans in his one-hour presentation. The fifth of ten children, Turner was born in 1946 in the coal town of Lynch, Kentucky, in Harlan County. His grandfathers, father, four uncles, and older brother were coal miners.

A Bill has spent his professional career studying and working on behalf of marginalized communities, helping them create opportunities in the larger world while not abandoning their significant cultural ties. He is best known for his groundbreaking research on African American communities in Appalachia. As an academic and a consultant, he has studied economic systems and social structures in the urban South and burgeoning Latino communities in the Southwest.

Turner's "The Harlan Renaissance" is a remembrance of the kinship and community in eastern Kentucky's coal towns. Turner describes Black life in the company towns in and around Harlan County during coal's final postwar boom years, which built toward an enduring bust as the children of Black miners, like Turner, left the region in search of better opportunities. The Harlan Renaissance gives readers a glimpse into what might be unfamiliar Appalachia: one consisting of large and vibrant Black communities, where families viewed the nation through the news that traveled within Black churches, schools, and restaurants.

He said young people back then were shaped by their community as much as they were also shaped by the struggles of their parents and grandparents. Something feels it is lacking in African American communities today.

"I find so many African Americans are lost, confused, unsure, unclear, perplexed, disoriented, and bewildered because they have lost touch with the attitudes, the beliefs, the customs, the dances, the jokes, information, moods, the legends, the opinions, the prejudices, the soft skills, the superstitions, the techniques, the traditions, and the value orientations of their great-grandparents," Turner said. "They don't know anything about it. Don't even know their great grandparents' names because we haven't been taught these things."

A 1968 University of Kentucky graduate, Turner received his doctorate from Notre Dame University and has dedicated his career to demographic and ethnographic studies and programmatic interventions in the Southern Appalachian Region. He served as interim president at Kentucky State University and taught at Berea College, Fisk University, and Howard University. He was inducted in 2006 into the Kentucky Civil Rights Hall of Fame.

"History tells people where they have been; what they have been; where they are and what they are. You just look back on this period on the clock of history that we have right now on February 11, 2022," Turner said. "This will be marked as one of the most transformative times in terms of American Democracy that we've ever seen since the country was organized. This is a clock ticking."